The Guilty Are Afraid

I kept the beam of light on her. There was nothing to tell me who she was. All she had on was this swimsuit. The fact that she was well groomed, that her hair had been recently shampooed and set, that her nails were manicured and stained dark red and the costume itself was a good one told me nothing. She could have been rich or she could have been poor. She could have been a model; she could have been just one of the thousands of workers in St. Raphael City; she could have been anything.

There was one thing I was certain of: she was the girl who had called for Jack Sheppey at the hotel: the one Greaves had been so certain had been a blonde. Remembering he had thought she had either been wearing a wig or had dyed her hair, I held the torch closer to satisfy myself that he had been wrong, and I did satisfy myself.

She was neither wearing a wig nor had she dyed her hair.

There was no doubt about that and that proved just how wrong a trained house dick could be.

I turned the beam of light on to her arms. In the bright light, the soft down looked fair. It wouldn’t have been natural if it had been otherwise. She had been worshipping the sun for months to judge by her tan: the down on her arms would naturally be bleached.

I straightened up. Taking my handkerchief from my pocket, I wiped my face.

The heat in the tiny room was awful. I found I had sweated right through my clothes and I moved back into the larger room.

It was then that I noticed another door that obviously communicated with the next-door cabin. There was a bolt on the door, but it wasn’t pushed into its socket.

That gave me a jolt.

I realized it must have been through this door that the killer had come and gone. For all I knew he was still in the cabin next door, waiting for me to go away, and I wished even more that I had brought a gun with me.

Moving softly I crossed the room, snapped off my flashlight and put my ear to the panel of the door. I listened for a long moment, but heard nothing. I groped for the door handle, found it and, gripping it tightly, I slowly turned it. When it was as far back as it would go I put a little pressure on the door, but it didn’t move.

Someone had gone into the next cabin through this doorway but had bolted the door after him.

Was he still in there?

I stepped back, aware that my mouth was dry. He probably hadn’t a spare icepick with him, but it was possible he had a gun.

Then a sound came to me that made me stiffen and set my nerves crawling.

In the distance came the wail of a police siren; a sound that grew in volume and told me a police car was coming along the promenade at high speed.

I wasn’t kidding myself that those prowl boys were sounding off for the fun of it. They were on business and the most obvious place for them to be coming to was right here.

I turned on my flashlight, took out my handkerchief and wiped the door handles in the little cabin. Although I worked fast, I didn’t skimp the job: I knew how important it was not to leave a print that would bring Katchen after me. Finished, I jumped for the door, opened it and looked quickly to right and left.

The beach was still deserted, but apart from the shadows made by the group of palms, it was as bare of a hiding place as the back of my hand.

The note of the siren was much louder now and still coming fast. If I returned the way I had come I was certain to run right into them. There was no hope of hiding among the palms. They would be sure to spot me as they came down towards the cabins. That left me with the wide-open beach.

When I have to I can run. There was a time when I had won a couple of impressive-looking cups for the half mile: not Olympic stuff, but moving in that direction.

I didn’t hesitate. I started off across the sand at not perhaps my best speed, but close to it.

I heard the siren blasting its way along the promenade.

I didn’t look back. I had to put about a thousand yards or so between me and those boys or else they would start shooting at me. I didn’t kid myself they wouldn’t see me.

Against the white sand and with the moonlight, I would be in sight for miles.

I had covered about five hundred yards when I heard the siren come to a wailing stop. This was the time for a spurt, but running through the soft yielding sand was tougher than I had imagined. I was beginning to pant and my legs were aching. I made my spurt, but it was nothing to get excited about.

It was then that I saw the beach sloped sharply to the sea, making a razorback in the form of a long sand dune.

In a few seconds the cops would have left their car and be down on the beach, and then the fun would start. If I could get on the lower level of the beach before they spotted me I would be out of their sight.

I turned and legged it for the top of the dune, running as I had never run before. Reaching the top, I dived head first down the slope, arriving nearly to the edge of the sea in a cloud of dry sand.

There had been no shout to tell me if I had been seen.